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“If you asked people, ‘Which political party has values that best reflect your own?’ Overwhelmingly, for all my adult life, the Liberals won that question,” Mr. Gregg said. “Today, they’ve become a party that basically represents no one and stands for nothing. And that’s how they’re viewed; I’m not being cruel or anything.”

Former Conservative pollster accusing Harper government of heavy-handed tactics to remove opposition in his article.

“This was no random act of downsizing, but a deliberate attempt to obliterate certain activities that were previously viewed as a legitimate part of government decision-making—namely, using research, science and evidence as the bases of policy formation,” Mr. Gregg charged.

“It also amounted to an attempt to eliminate anyone who might use science, facts, and evidence to challenge government policies,” he added.

In a lecture titled, “1984 in 2012: The Assault on Reason,” Mr. Gregg said he first became concerned when the government cancelled the mandatory long-form census, of which he, as a pollster, was a long-time user, calling its explanation about the need to protect privacy, “creepy” and unfounded.

Not sure if anybody picked up on the fact that one of the reasons Gregg might be pissed off is that he was a big user of the census information as a pollster

Mr. Gregg said he started to see the cancellation of the census as a “canary in the mineshaft.”

and he was right because shortly after came the gun registry cancellation and the prison construction fiasco.

the cuts rolled out in the omnibus 2012 post-stimulus budget—half the staff at Statistics Canada receiving redundancy notices; along with 20 per cent of the workforce at Library and Archives Canada; and 70 per cent of the scientists at Parks Canada; the cancellation of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy; the Experimental Lakes Area project; the National Council on Welfare and the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Science amongst others; plus the massive changes to the Fisheries Act and Environmental Assessment regulations

I have no respect for Conservatives. Fear, yes. Respect, not deserved. You are selling out your country for a few bucks and a failed ideology.

The stats can gutting was something that I never heard about. The sentence before your quote said it was hidden inside the omnibus budget. Makes me wonder how many more of such "nuggets" we will discover inside that toxic, anti-democratic budget bill.

Are you surprised though? Cancelling the mandatory long-form census was basically Harper rubbing his sweaty balls in the face of legitimate science.

It's a proven Conservative strategy - cripple a department, then cut it when it is no longer functional. They did it with the long gun registry (cancelling late fees, paying for people's renewals to boost the deficit, etc.), apparently they're doing it with the Saskatchewan wheat board too. Stay tuned.

No... not surprised. Nor about the wheat board which I figured was dead meat anyways. I have trouble being upset about the wheat board, since most farmers in Saskatchewan seemed to have voted CPC and are therefore getting what they asked for.

I have trouble being upset about the wheat board, since most farmers in Saskatchewan seemed to have voted CPC

Yeah, that's a whole other story. Everyone seems to think "fuck them, I'm not the one whose kid smokes marijuana/needs government to regulate my industry/lives in a city with a shitty bridge/needs the government to invest wisely based on census data/my own husband doesn't beat me so fuck social programs for battered women." The end result is everybody is suddenly shocked when the Conservatives' bullshit affects them personally.

The problem being is that he doesn't bother to explain how the redundancy notices work. If you have, in one organization, 10 people working the same job, and you need to cut one of those people, all ten people recieve the redundancy notices.

The fact that 70% of scientists at Parks Canada got a notice does not in any way shape or form mean that 70% of them will be cut. It just means that there's a lot of folks at that department with common job descriptions.

If they're factually incorrect, sure. But if the public servant in question simply disagrees with a decision being made (such as any particular cuts being made), that is in no way shape or form their business to "point out". We elect people to formulate our governmental policies.

Sometimes you can. You can be absolutely certain that longer, stiffer sentences do not deter criminals. The Conservatives tossed that out. You can be certain a long-form Census which is not mandatory is scientifically worthless, they didn't care about that. You can be certain that human activity is having a negative effect on the environment, and the Conservative response is to cut Canadian climate research so that we can't monitor it anymore.

It isn't always a matter of balancing priorities. Sometimes the Conservatives just do things out of an ideology that can be objectively be proven wrong.

You can be absolutely certain that longer, stiffer sentences do not deter criminals.

See, now this is exactly what I'm talking about. You're making the assumption that reducing the crime rate is apparently the only valid reason for sentencing. That is not the case. Punishing wrong-doing is perfectly valid. Ensuring that people who victimize others receive a sentence that society would deem just is valid.

Likewise, you can be certain that human activity is having a negative effect on the environment. But you can't be certain that any particular research program is worth the money that could otherwise be diverted to some other aspect of government spending.

Public servants shall support both individual and collective ministerial accountability and provide Parliament and Canadians with information on the results of their work.

So in a sense you're both right. Public servants are required to carry out the lawful decisions of their ministers, but they're also required to be transparent with the public about the results. So if a decision results in shitty consequences, the public service is required to share that with the public even if the minister/PMO might prefer that they didn't. An authoritarian minister might call that "dissent" while the service might call it "accountability" and "information".

Providing information and providing your opinion are two entirely different things. I don't have any problem whatsoever with someone saying "taking this Course of Action A will result in B", whatever B might be, if A is a course of action proposed or being taken by the government.

I do have a problem with a public servant saying "I think we should not take course of action A because I disagree with B". That's for the ministers and the public to decide after evaluating the severity of B.

They're meant to be non-partisan in as much as they're meant to enact the decisions taken out by the duly elected government, regardless of whether or not they agree wholly with all the decisions that are made. Is some of the public sector is being "purged" (and keep in mind we're talking cuts of 5 - 10%, not 80%), that's a side-effect, not the intended effect, of the effort to cut down on rampant government spending.

What obvious ideological slant? Every department's getting hit with roughly the same amount percentage wise. DND's getting the largest chunk of the pie, followed by Public Safety, for total numbers. They just don't get mentioned in articles like this because it doesn't support the narrative that the dude's trying to build.

They don't cut iniatives, they cut funding the the depts. The depts then cut the programs. Harper didn't decide to cut these things, senior beaurucrats examined their new budgets and cut things that weren't priorities.

He's talking about senior departmental bureaucrats who, in most instances, are Harper appointees, and who have been made well aware of which policies, programs, priorities and initiatives Harper, his cabinet ministers and deputy ministers, view as either undesirable or expendable.

You cannot blame a fundamental shift away from basing action on factual information on "bureaucrats". As always with Harper and his weasels, the pressure comes from the top.

He's talking about senior departmental bureaucrats who, in most instances, are Harper appointees, and who have been made well aware of which policies, programs, priorities and initiatives Harper, his cabinet ministers and deputy ministers, view as either undesirable or expendable.

No, no I'm not. Also dept. bureaucrats generally aren't appointed.

You cannot blame a fundamental shift away from basing action on factual information on "bureaucrats".

Why is that word in quotations? They are the ones who make these calls.

As always with Harper and his weasels, the pressure comes from the top.

As always with the radical left, they have no idea what they are talking about.

Nonsense. Virtually all top-level senior departmental managers - in other words, those directly responsible for implementing policies made at a ministerial level - are government appointees. How do you think they get that position - by winning a popular vote within the department? Do you think they just bob to the top of civil service ranks, like corks? They are vetted, cleared, approved and appointed by the ministers and deputy ministers from a list of candidates, usually both internal and external. Both candidates for new positions, and incumbent senior managers who have shown strong support for policies that run counter to Tory dogma - say the policies of a previous government - are quietly shown the door. This is undeniable.

And precisely who conducts those interviews, and who makes the decisions? Are you not aware that nearly 1 in 4 failed Tory 2011 election candidates have now been appointed to Harper's senior bureaucracy - the one you claim is so "neutral"? Who, precisely, interviewed them? Who sat on the selection boards? Were they, perhaps, other Tory politicians? What are their qualifications, except that the Canadian people have judged they were unsuitable to be put into positions of authority?

Since he became PM, Harper has appointed over 1,000 people with significant Conservative political connections to various federal roles: failed candidates, rainmakers, bagmen, party executives and gofers, administrative assistants of cabinet ministers. They have become not only senior bureaucrats, but adjudicators, tribunal members, Crown corp execs and Board members, and have been appointed to formerly politically neutral, formerly arms-length governing bodies and regulatory agencies. In contrast, Harper has appointed fewer than 80 people with significant ties to other federal parties, and most of those to honorary or symbolic sinecures, positions with large salaries and good exposure, but fundamentally without any significant policy-making power.

So what, precisely, is it about just being a Tory that affords an applicant a 12 to 1 statistical advantage over all other candidates in the "competition" for senior positions within the federal bureaucracy? Could it be ... being a Tory?

In fact, just two months ago, Marni Larkin, a prominent Manitoba Tory, was named to the CBC Board of Directors. She herself has confirmed that she didn't apply for the position, that she wasn't even aware there was a position open, and that she has absolutely no experience in broadcasting, in managing a broadcaster, or in running a Crown corporation! So what, precisely, were her qualifications to sit on the governing body for the crown jewel of Canadian culture and national expression?

Equally importantly, what was her attraction to the politicians who appointed her, apparently out of thin air, to the CBC Board - except her paid-up Tory party card, and the autographed picture of Jim Moore she keeps on her bedside table?

But of course, she's far too honest to push a Harper agenda, will strive to defend the institution from politicization, and will fight valiantly against Harper's ongoing plan to starve the CBC into oblivion!

Way to be fair, evenhanded and apolitical in your appointments, Tory Culture Minister Jim Moore!

n fact, just two months ago, Marni Larkin, a prominent Manitoba Tory, was named to the CBC Board of Directors. what was her attraction to the politicians who appointed her to the CBC Board, apparently out of thin air, except her paid-up Tory party card and the autographed picture of Jim Moore she keeps on her bedside table?

You fail to answer my points, shill. But if you want to discuss talking points, here's another one:

In another blatant example of both unethical Tory deck-stacking and cynical Tory featherbedding, in May, the Harper Government™ tried to appoint a twice-failed Conservative candidate, Guy Dufort, as arbitrator in an ongoing dispute between Canada Post and CUPW.

Amazingly enough, Dufort had also been - now get this, el notario - a former labour lawyer for Canada Post for five years! Even better, he had actually fought CUPW in court on a massive pay equity claim the union had filed - and he had lost, bigtime! His execrable courtroom performance, and his subsequent loss of tens of millions of dollars in CUPW back pay claims, caused him to be summarily dropped as counsel by Canada Post, just a few days later.

Even better than that: these were, unfortunately, facts he neglected to mention in the the 35 pages of self-serving justifications he gave in his written refusal to recuse himself, when the union demanded he do so.

Despite his ongoing and best efforts to remain an agent of twisted Tory labour policy dressed in an arbitrator's honourable clothing, Dufort was unceremoniously kicked out on his ass by the Honourable Danièle Tremblay-Lamer of the Federal Court, just five weeks ago. She took less than a day to render her decision.

Way to be fair, evenhanded and apolitical in your appointment of arbitrators, Tory Labour Minister Lisa Raitt! You gonna appoint el notario next? Being a longstanding Conservative shill, and also being incapable of registering a single thought outside The Official Party Line, he certainly has the qualifications!

When a job posting comes up...any job from the PMO to the security guards, all people connected to the HOC email system get an email with a job posting. It's part of the law as being the crown. Then people apply. Then people are interviewed.

You know what hilarious, I looked up your quote...and the only person who even talked about "her paid up tory party card" was Pat Martin.

“They’re not irrational to the extent they’re prepared to commit political suicide,” Mr. Gregg maintained. “The extent to which scientists stood up to them, and could actually put forward their case in a persuasive way, they will throttle it in; they will rein it in.”

This is probably the most important point in the article, in my view, to those who care about this. Harper and his like thrive on the silence of the apathetic and the fearful. At least some of those who are themselves silent are nevertheless sway-able by the reasonable arguments of those who opposed Harper. The Conservative vote is still a minority one in Canada, many Canadians still disagree with them or are on the fence. The rest of us need to continue to speak truth to his power, and do it loudly so that everybody can hear. Not only is that good, it's also pretty darn democratic to boot.

I like all the counter-points to your statement claiming that the funds should go to industry to boost the economy, yet most analysis has shown that funding of fundamental research has resulted in far greater returns than any short term R&D that industry/corporations tend to focus on.

Um I work for a 20-person company [re: was a startup] that relied on SHRDs tax credits and grants to get off the ground. How do you propose you develop an industry leading [or at least comparable] product line while paying competitive salaries? It takes years to mature product lines and even with early sales [to people happy to accept an immature product] you still won't break even.

You sound like an ignorant "savant" 15 year old when you say things like "corporate welfare" and what not.

So, if I take your tenor to be correct, you know that Canadian corporations have never had as much cash in hand as they do now, but you still advocate using Canadian tax dollars for this job rather than having these nominally independent entities fund their own activities?

There's only so far down the incentive continuum you can go before it starts to be welfare.

Hi, genuine question: do you have a source for your claim that " Canadian corporations have never had more cash on hand"? I know it's not true for Canadian Oil companies. Prices are in the shitter in Canada.

Awesome, that was a great link. IMO mark Carney is very competent so I trust his opinion , but companies like SunCor do have valid points. They can't rely on commodity prices so it is prudent to have more cash on hand. However , I'm not qualified o be able to answer how much cash is too much in this economic climate.

Well, as per that article, corporate Canada is sitting on three times as much cash as they typically do, relative to the GDP of the nation. I don't know if Carney is suggesting they go back to that average as much as he means to have them start to loosen the purse strings.

Except now this company pays taxes, our employees pay taxes, we export IP wealth to quite a few countries abroad (well more so, money coming into Canada from abroad). The days of starting a globally competitive tech company in your garage are 40 years prior.

... various corporations operating in Canada that they have to hit up the Canadian taxpayer to subsidize their R&D with government-funded efforts? [...] Face it, this is just another version of corporate welfare.

How is that in any way not an over generalizing slap in the face to the countless startups who are bringing money into the country and providing IP related jobs beyond manufacturing and services [re: the future]?

Are we or are we not subsidizing costs that independent businesses should by rights be shouldering themselves? You can argue that there are benefits to doing so and that those benefits outweigh the costs AND we can dispute on where the line can be sensibly drawn for such subsidization, but at the end of the day, it's still a subsidy.

Most of the R&D money from this set up has been going to oil field projects, so I'm a bit at a loss why you're swinging so hard for the fences defending a little tech start up. It's not like much of this money is getting to you guys, anyway, is it?

You're making do with other incentives, ones that I coincidentally agree with.

Parties aside it boggles my mind that we can have highly intelligent people who are mentally disconnected from reality so badly that the thought of where their paycheque comes from is absent and as aloof as a Senator during the winter.

Still, what about the alleged government slashing and burning of science spending? Some scientists had an interesting take on that, too, saying this discussion has become unnecessarily polarized, and that it glosses over some fundamental questions the Canadian public needs to address. For these scientists, it’s more about where the money is going than how much of it is being spent. In fact, as the chart below shows, more money is being spent than ever before on research, and research budgets are bigger than they were pre-Harper

Has the scope changed? Probably a bit (which shouldn't be a shock if you listened to them campaign in 2011), but all the funding is still there.

I actually upvoted you because you provided some evidence to support your views for once in your life, but replace "probably a bit" with "certainly changed" and you get something closer to the truth.

If you dug into the numbers, you would probably find a large shift out of things such as statistics, climate change, environmental science, and towards things like oil sands research, CO2 capture, etc.

The following article supports my views, describing how the shift as been away from "pure science" research towards business driven research. Typical with Harper policy, it is corporatist and short sighted.

Haha, right I forgot that Harper is single handedly saving the economy and every single thing he does can be backwards rationalized as "saving the economy" and every single opposition voice must "hate the economy." Oh and also freedom. They certainly hate freedom.

You aren't being downvoted for posting the source, you're being downvoted for being a dick about it. As said, a picture of a graph isn't worth much, as it doesn't indicate which areas of "science and technology" receive funding, which is an important consideration. If you had the article, you should have posted a link to it in your original comment.

Suck it up princess. If you're unable to present information without being an ass, you don't deserve to be listened to. The way you act seems to almost single handedly disprove the stereotype of Canadian's as being polite.

Did you ever go to school? I assume you must have. And when you went to school, you would have almost certainly written essays (or papers, or reports, or whatever you feel like calling them). And when writing those essays, if you made a claim, or quoted something, or displayed a chart, you would be expected to indicate where that information came from. This rule applied, even when using a class textbook or reading, or even something you were told by the teacher or instructor. Now, this isn't a school, it's an internet forum, so it would be absurd to ask for a properly formatted MLA citation of the Maclean's article, but it is fully reasonable to expect that, when quoting an article, that a link to the article is provided. Now, it's fully possible that failing to provide a link was an oversight on your part, but considering how you started acting like a spoiled child when asked for a link, I think not. I don't necessarily dispute any of the claims of the Maclean's article (but I also haven't read it, seeing as how you have still failed to provide a link), and I will upvote your post with the graph and quote if you edit it to include a link to the full article, but you need to keep in mind that if you make a claim, it is your responsibility to source that claim.

He did sort of support his claim. However, when asked to provide a source, he posted a graph from a Macleans article without actually posting the article, and then whines like a five year old child when asked to post the actual source of the graph. It's like a student writing a paper, and instead of doing up a bibliography and footnotes, just tells the teacher to figure out where everything came from for themselves. He could have simply posted the entire article, and that would have been it. But no, he had to be a horse's ass about it.

The fact that it made front page now means that the majority didnt get a chance to see it the last 4 times....some people have lives and dont spend 24 hours a day on reddit...it's not a snooze you lose scenario.

Just in case anyone was wondering, this article brings up nothing we haven't already heard. There's no additional inside information from a pollster. It's simply a political rant full of polemics and hyperbole. He even manages to tie in the death of bin Laden with the Harper Government's changes to the census. It's the same stuff that's posted on r/Canada every day.

He even manages to tie in the death of bin Laden with the Harper Government's changes to the census

You're the one spewing hyperbole because he does no such thing. The direct quote is:

"Expanding on a reference to the execution of foreign nationals on foreign soil in his lecture, Mr. Gregg went further in the interview, calling Mr. Obama’s decision to order the execution of Osama Bin Laden “by any traditional criteria, an international crime.”"

He obviously is not saying that Harper had anything to do with Osama, but his broad argument is the same old shit about the lack of reason sweeping the world. It's nothing more than his political opinions under the guise of expert testimony. He's just another guy in the academic world who believes his political opinions are superior and worth listening to.

I didn't lie at all. He is tying those two events together under the umbrella of the universal death of reason. That's only one of the more absurd points of the talk. When arguments like this are made they are nuanced. I'm sorry that you don't seem to understand that.

Im saying this from a completely non-partisan point of view (I mean he calls Obama an international criminal on page 2), but when did we start listening to pollsters opinions? I thought they were to report on other peoples opinions.

First of all, I didn't downvote you, nor do I think you should be downvoted for asking a question, even if it is a dumb one.

You're just shooting the messenger here. That's kind of what people do when they don't like something but can't find the words to express themselves.

Why should being an ex-pollster disqualify you from having an opinion. Bill O'Reilly was a game show host, Frank Rich was a theatre critic, Noam Chomsky was (is?) a linguist, Tom Friedman married rich. Anybody can do this, and if you do it well enough you will get paid for it.

The article is well-written and well argued. Getting past the author, is there something specific you disagree with?

I guess to begin I would say that the pollster did not write the article (which I would agree was fairly well written) but was in fact given a paid (I assume) speaking engagement.

Now I dont know the entire contents of the speaking engagement, maybe it dealt more with polling than this article would lead you to believe, but it seems as though he took the opportunity to simply provide his viewpoint on the governments in US and Canada. Again, totally allowed but a bit strange.

My complaint is not with Mr. Gregg's opinions but in the weight we as a community seem to be giving them. If this speech was made by a lobbyist (similar to pollster in that they are an appendage of government) would we have given it any attention?

Finally, Mr Gregg did seem to talk in hyperbole a great deal; in regards to the Osama bin Laden strike:

Noting that this summary execution if anything became a source of national pride in the media, Mr. Gregg called it “the most egregious example of the assault on reason”

Thanks for the correction (I'd skimmed the article earlier; my point still stands) and your comments.

I guess it's good to ask if the writer/speaker has an agenda, or is being paid to promote certain policies/propaganda. (Gregg seemed to be an equal opportunity insulter.)

A lasting image for me was seeing Americans dancing in the street the night Osama died. (Obama supporter here, by the way.) Honestly, I was kind of sickened by it, in the way your gut can tell you that something is profoundly not right. In the same way that Saddam was disposed of by a quisling kangaroo court and a botched execution, what exactly was to celebrate? Neither changed anything, both diminished us. So you don't get my sympathy here (not that that counts for a lot!).

Now, small crews, made up of Canadian and U.S. officers specially designated and trained for cross-border policing, can go back and forth across the maritime border, all the while subject to the laws of the country they are in. In U.S waters, a crew may include four U.S. Coast Guard officers and an RCMP officer patrolling on a small U.S Coast Guard vessel. On the Canadian side, RCMP officers will be on a Canadian vessel with one U.S. Coast Guard officer.

Again, you speak lies. This program has just been put in place by Stephen Harper three months ago, in his June omnibus bill. Before, USCG personnel were sometimes placed as observers and co-ordinators on Canadian boats, but they did not have the power to make arrests.

However, the current act does allow for American officers to come on Canadian soil in extreme situations, also known as the "hot pursuit" exception. The project, named Shiprider, began in Detroit-Windsor area in September 2005, and was followed by two pilot projects two years later in Cornwall-Massena (Ontario-New York State) and the Strait of Georgia (British Columbia and Washington state).

Again, you lie. Shiprider was no more than a series of limited-duration, proof-of-concept exercises in integrating and co-ordinating American and Canadian marine detection, monitoring and pursuit methodologies. Each exercise was carefully and individually set up in such a way that, if a critical situation actually arose during that particular test, the equipment and personnel on hand, could, in a pinch, be legally used for a hot pursuit endeavour. (No such situation arose, and it never was.) Once that particular test, in that particular marine corridor, was wound down, the hot pursuit authority died, and was not reinstated until the next short test began.

In fact, the Shiprider tests were so temporary, they all lasted less than 60 days; the Windsor operation lasted just two weeks. They were not ongoing operations. Further, they were also extremely limited in area, scope, timeline and authority. What Shiprider was not, as you claim, was a fully-functioning intercept-and-arrest program like we have now. It was also set up to be:

exclusively marine, in extremely limited water corridors. Not land-based, ergo not on Canadian soil, as you falsely claim;

subject to all applicable Canadian laws, policies and procedures; and

all - ALL - patrols and actions were to take place under the direct and exclusive control of on-board members of the RCMP.

That's a helluva lot different than having a single RCMP observer hanging around a bunch of armed Americans as they independently pursue and arrest Canadian citizens in Canadian territory, on their own initiative - which is the current state of affairs.

Of course, Harper wants this outrageous surrender of our national sovereignty to a foreign military force kept on the qt as much as possible. This is evidenced by the fact that it was buried deep in that abortion of an omnibus bill, and not presented on its own merits, accompanied by trumpets, background banners, confetti, and a jet flyover, like Harper is wont to do with all his other LawnOrder legislation.

SFU international security expert Andre Gerolymatos says the legislation is necessary to fight crime. “It’s a major price to pay because to some degree we are compromising our sovereignty, however, the nature of crime and security has become such that we have no choice but to cooperate with our neighbours to the south. The alternative is spending a great deal more amount of money on security.”

I don't appreciate being called an idiot without any facts or evidence to back up why we are wrong to criticize the Harper government on many of their decisions and policies.... oh wait, you probably don't believe in facts or evidence. nvm then.